This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: bbc news
September 24, 2010
A fossilised flower found in Patagonia by an Argentinean team is shedding light on the origins of sunflowers.
The large flower is highly unusual because most plant fossils are just pollen grains.
The fossil is from the Asteraceae family, the relatives of daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions.
Until now, scientists have relied on genetic evidence to work out where this plant family originated.
Finding this very well-preserved flower confirms that
Source: BBC News
September 24, 2010
Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson has told the BBC there is no reason he cannot stand in the country's presidential elections next year.
Mr Johnson, now an elected senator, said military leaders been elected in other countries.
His party was given the green light to compete in the polls earlier this week.
He is notorious for a 1990 video, in which he was seen drinking beer as his men cut off the ears of ex-President Samuel Doe, before killing him.
Source: BBC News
September 24, 2010
A small but revealing group of letters written by the playwright Oscar Wilde have been sold at auction in Derby.
The five letters, sold as separate lots, reached a total of £33,900 and were all bought by one bidder.
Auctioneers, Bamfords of Derby, said the letters appear to reveal Wilde propositioning a magazine editor at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
They were written to Alsager Vian, during the Society Magazine era, and were sold off by his desce
Source: BBC News
September 24, 2010
US singer Eddie Fisher, who sold millions of records in the 50s and was married to Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds, has died at the age of 82.
Fisher was a teen idol in the 1950s with dozens of Top 40 hits and his own TV show.
His marriage to Debbie Reynolds produced two children, including Carrie Fisher, who starred as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Fisher was married five times in all, including also to Connie Stevens.
Source: Newsweek
September 24, 2010
Sweden has revealed the future direction of Europe, and not for the first time. For decades, Sweden led the way in defining the mixed model of free trade and social solidarity that became the European ideal. Not anymore. In the election this month Swedish voters joined their less successful EU neighbors in turning their backs on traditional politics, in which the pendulum swung between parties advocating more free trade and parties on the center left advocating more solidarity—but no further. No
Source: AP
September 22, 2010
While Texans are fiercely proud their state was once its own republic, and California celebrates the same former status on its flag, relatively few Louisianans know that a group of their forebears overthrew Spanish rule to carve out a tiny, independent nation 200 years ago. With the bicentennial coming up Thursday, historians and descendants of the rebels are hoping to change that.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 23, 1810, 75 armed rebels slipped into the Spanish fort at Baton R
Source: AP
September 22, 2010
A redevelopment project in this Albanian town has been halted after construction work discovered a 6th-century tomb.
Officials hailed the delay as a landmark decision in this impoverished Balkan country, where rampant construction often obliterates cultural heritage such as archaeological sites.
Two years ago, Albania created a state archaeological service, but laws meant to ensure that potential archaeological sites were excavated ahead of development were regularly i
Source: AP
September 23, 2010
A U.S. military team returned from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa this week with the remains of what are believed to be two U.S. servicemen who died in a fierce World War II battle there.
A C-17 plane with the remains landed at Hickam Air Force Base after a 6 1/2-week excavation mission, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command spokesman Army Maj. Ramon Osorio said Wednesday.
Forensic scientists will analyze the bones to identify them. The process can take months or even ye
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
September 22, 2010
A team of Peruvian archaeologists have discovered two ceremonial temples more than 4,000 years old in Peru’s northern jungle, which makes them the most ancient in the country and identifies them with the Bracamoros culture, the daily El Comercio said on Saturday.
On both sites were found 14 burial vaults that typically contain the skeletons of newborns and adolescents placed there as offerings at different times in the course of the 800 years these buildings were in use, the newspap
Source: Discovery News
September 23, 2010
The remains of sacrificed children suggest they were escorted from distant parts of the Inca realm.
The remains of seven children apparently killed in a ritual and buried beneath a 500- to 600-year-old building in Peru's Cuzco Valley have given scientists new glimpses of the sketchily understood Inca practice of sacrificing select children in elaborate ceremonies.
The children were buried at the same time, apparently after having been killed in a sacrificial rite that h
Source: BBC
September 23, 2010
The first female Afghan officers since the early 1990s have been commissioned into the army.
Twenty-nine women passed out from a class of new recruits who hope to take the lead role in security from foreign forces by 2014.
Their recruitment is part of a huge US-funded training programme. Women were forbidden from serving by the Taliban.
Women served in the army of Afghanistan's communist-backed regime in the 1980s but retreated from military service durin
Source: BBC
September 23, 2010
An intricately carved Sri Lankan pipe case from the 17th Century has been sold at an auction in London.
The Sinhalese ivory double-pipe case was sold for £51,650 ($80,300) - far higher than its estimate of £8,000-£12,000 ($12,400-$18,600).
The UK buyer who purchased it wanted to stay anonymous, a spokeswoman from Christie's told BBC News.
The case was part of a collection of unusual smoking pipes to be sold by the auction house.
It is thought t
Source: BBC
September 22, 2010
An Indian pilot who flew Hawker Hurricanes during World War II has died, it has been announced.
Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, 92, died at at Darent Valley Hospital in Kent on Saturday following a stroke.
Sqn Ldr Pujji was believed to be the last surviving fighter pilot from a group of 24 Indians who arrived in Britain in 1940.
He survived several crashes and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for services in Burma....
Source: BBC
September 23, 2010
A previously unknown painting by 16th Century master Pieter Bruegel the Elder has been revealed by picture restorers, the Prado museum in Madrid says.
The painting, The Wine of St Martin's Day, shows about 100 people celebrating the first wine of the season.
Before this find, there were just 40 signed Bruegels in existence.
The museum is now negotiating to buy the painting from its owners at a price of up to 7m euros ($9.4m; £5.9m), said the El Pais newspap
Source: AP
September 23, 2010
Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked yet another controversy Thursday saying a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel's survival.
The provocative comments prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uran
Source: AP
September 23, 2010
The University of Illinois on Thursday denied 1960s radical William Ayers emeritus faculty status after trustees Chairman Christopher Kennedy noted Ayers dedicated a book to, among others, the man who killed Kennedy's father, Robert F. Kennedy.
All nine voting trustees either opposed granting Ayers, a recently retired University of Illinois-Chicago professor, the largely honorary status or abstained from the vote. Universities often grant emeritus status to distinguished retired fac
Source: Time.com
September 22, 2010
As tensions between China and Japan continue to escalate, both sides can take solace knowing that things could be much worse. And not long ago, they were. In 2005, large demonstrations broke out in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and other Chinese cities in response to Japanese efforts to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and a Japanese history textbook that downplayed its wartime aggression. Protesters smashed windows of Japanese restaurants and other businesses, and police stru
Source: MSNBC
September 22, 2010
JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists have excavated a lavish, private theater box in a 400-seat facility at King Herod's winter palace in the Judean desert, the team's head said Tuesday.
Ehud Netzer of Jerusalem's Hebrew University said the room provides further evidence of King Herod's famed taste for extravagance.
Herod commissioned Roman artists to decorate the theater walls with elaborate paintings and plaster moldings around 15 B.C., Netzer said. Its upper portions
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 23, 2010
A long-lost poem discovered in the Oxford University archives could throw new light on the author of Paradise Lost, who died in 1674. The comic ditty, An Extempore upon a Faggot, is attributed to Milton and is laden with sexual innuendo.
However, scholars are unsure of its provenance and suspect it may have been the work of a jealous rival.
Dr Jennifer Batt, an academic in English Literature at Oxford, stumbled upon the poem while sifting through the Harding Collection,
Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
September 20, 2010
AUSTIN -- Leaders of an interfaith group that includes Christians, Jews and Muslims urged the State Board of Education on Monday to abandon what they called an "inflammatory" resolution that purportedly documents an anti-Christian, pro-Islamic bias in world history textbooks.
The resolution, which is expected to come before the board Friday, is threatening to entangle the board in a new controversy after a series of "culture war" debates that has brought national
